Sorry I am late. I always target Friday for an update, but I could not get to a computer yesterday. Anyway, here is what I wanted to talk about this week, and it is back to Spear of Seth. Or, rather, the sequel. The first book should come out this summer. I do not have a date yet. Unfortunately, a backlog at Virtual Tales delayed it from the original date, which was supposed to occur early this year. This should no be the case with the sequel, because VT does not currently accept new submissions, in order to clean up the said backlog. That does not stop me from submitting the said sequel, because contracted authors like yours truly can submit anytime. I finished a draft. It will go to VT in a couple months. What is it about? THe question should be, what had Nikola Tesla in common with Egypt?

I came across Visual Novels. What are they? It seems they are big in Japan and they are a type of computer games. I would compare them to graphic novels, which you read a follow on PC. Some are just like that, but many are interactive with multiple endings. Currently I am talking to a company interested in producing a VN version of Spear of Seth. Here is a wiki link to VN: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_novel.

I have finished Alhazred by Donal Tyson. See here:http://www.amazon.com/Alhazred-Author-Necronomicon-Donald-Tyson/dp/0738708925/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1297472475&sr=1-1. I found it quite good. It it a pretty thick book and tries to fill gaps in the life of the Mad Arab Alhazred, the "author of Necronomicon", as invented by H.P.Lovercraft. In other words, Alhazred is a key character in the Cthulhu Mythos. The book describes his travels through Arabia. It is open ended and I regret there is no sequel (it was published in 2006). It brings up an interesting issue, though: Arabia is probably the last unexplored region on Earth. It is a group of closed states and societies and you would need permission and bodyquards. Yet there must be a lot of stuff. There were thriving kingdoms in the past, like Saba. Perhaps the ongoing political changes will open the region. I wish I could go on an expedition there. What about Irem, the City of Pillars? Could it be in the Empty Quarter? The desert itself must be preserving artifacts well.

One of the questions people like to know the answer to is how many copies a book sells. It used to e easy, until ca. 2009. There was an phone number you called and reached Ingram. This is a big distributor. They told you the number of books ordered. Of course, books sold outside Ingram too, but you could multiply the number by a factor and you got a pretty good idea. Not anymore. Ingram discontinued the number. So what can you do. There is the Amazon besteselling rank, of course. You can compare books. The question is, how to translate the rank into the number of copies. There is a way, here: http://www.fonerbooks.com/surfing.htm. Essentially, if you rank under 1,000, you have a bestseller. 100,000 rank is about 1 copy per day. Check your own and you will see. What I wonder is how the Kindle raking corresponds to the overall bestselling rank. I noticed that if you rank about 1,000,000 for a paperback, your ebook will rank around 100,000 at Kindle. The question is, how it convert in

Author

René Daniel, the site founder, physician, scientist (gene therapy, HIV, aging) and a writer of adventure and fantasy novels. His first novel, Spear of Seth, is set in the ancient Egypt Underworld. His second novel, The Last Secret of Nikola Tesla ( an unknown Tesla's legacy leads to Indiana Jones-like adventure in Egypt).